News

Southern Circuit – Applications Open for Filmmakers & Screening Partners

By Teresa Hollingsworth, Sr. Director, Film & Traditional Arts, South Arts –

Submit your film or become a Screening Partner.
South Arts is now accepting film submissions for the 2018-19 Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers. Filmmakers will be paid to tour with their film throughout the South, participate in post-screening Q&A’s, and lead local conversations through educational, social, and press engagements. Don’t miss this opportunity to join the South’s only tour of filmmakers.

Submit Your Film

Have a venue? Allow us to help you engage audiences in impactful ways around indie film.
We work with Screening Partners to select the films and filmmakers in the Southern Circuit, create audience development strategies, and build connections among partners for regional tours over the course of the season. And, since South Arts covers each filmmaker’s honorarium, participation won’t hurt your budget! Allow us to help you bring your community together through great films.

Become a Screening Partner

About the Circuit
The Southern Circuit Tour of Independent Filmmakers is the South’s only tour of filmmakers.  We collaborate with a network of Screening Partner venues and filmmakers to share the transformative power of indie film with people in communities across the South.

Southern Circuit is an amazing opportunity for both emerging and established filmmakers. Filmmakers are paid to tour with their film, participate in post-screening Q&A’s, and lead conversations through educational, social, and press engagements. Meeting with Southern audiences of all makeups and backgrounds, filmmakers share their work and experience their film through the lens of local audiences.

Southern Circuit works with our Screening Partners to develop independent film audiences throughout the South. Our Screening Partner venues come in many shapes and sizes, including schools and universities, performing arts centers, places of worship, and museums. Southern Circuit isn’t just for film aficionados – audiences are comprised of high school and college students, community members of all ages, families, social clubs—everyone! These are more than a screening; we connect audiences face-to-face with some of today’s most sought-after filmmakers for an in-depth look at the art of filmmaking and a host of relevant topics. Films explore the issues—and people—that affect our world, sparking important conversations at the local level.

We screen feature-length animation, documentary, experimental and narrative films. Southern Circuit is composed of three separate Circuits, each with six filmmakers (for 18 filmmakers total) who travel (by air and auto) to an estimated six-eight communities each throughout the South (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee). The Circuit tours take place the months of September, October, November, February, March, and April. Filmmakers will tour an estimated 10-12 days.


Filmmakers selected for the 2018-2019 Southern Circuit receive:

  • A $400 screening honorarium for each screening on the tour. Total screening honoraria may total as much as $3,200.
  • Paid travel expenses (prepaid airfare; reimbursement for car rental, gas expenses, and airline baggage fees) for the tour.
  • A per diem of $200 (per evening away from home) to cover expenses for meals and lodging.
  • Logistics and travel support from the South Arts staff.
  • Marketing support from South Arts and Screening Partners for each screening.

In return, selected filmmakers agree to:

  • Travel to designated Screening Partner venues throughout the South.
  • Present a screening approximately 40-120 minutes in length.
  • Engage audiences in a 30-minute post-screening Q&A discussion of the work, the filmmaking process, and their lives as artists.
  • Participate in program-related events coordinated by Screening Partners on the tour, such as private dinners, public receptions, classroom presentations, etc.
  • Participate in Southern Circuit social media to promote the tour